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We can't answer this for you, only relate our own preferences. What I can say is not to believe that one or other method holds a distinct advantage over the other. Certain situations will lend themselves to using a computer or not. I sometimes have to because the complexity of a passage reaches a point that I can't imagine it all in my head or play it all on the piano at once: I need the computer playback, however inadequate, to get some idea of whether I want to use the idea in this form. Hearing the crappy playback isn't necessarily a problem if you can override it with the mental knowledge of what the real instrument is going to sound like. On the other hand I find choral music much easier to write at the keyboard because I can see the spacings and movement between voices more clearly than when it's written down. Physically having to click and select notes can waste time too, I find. I'd recommend that you try writing without using Finale, just to see how you feel about it.

You've still misunderstood me on a vital point. I have never been trying to argue that 'Beethoven is better than...' or 'Beethoven has more merit than...', simply that he has some merit or quality in his music, and I define this merit via the fact that some people regard his music as intellectually stimulating and emotionally engaging enough to want to hear it of their own free will. So of course I am only confining this to a selected sample, even if this amount represents, in reality, a minority. I only want to prove that a number of people like his music, not that this is more than for another type of music or that these people are somehow superior in taste or some other factor. Of course one couldn't prove such subjective factors scientifically. Beethoven has merit simply because somebody wants to hear it, and they want to hear it because it appeals in some degree to their own, personal, subjective idea of what music should be like. This is all the more remarkable given that the audience he commands still exists today and it has come to his music freely - obviously you can't force someone to like something. I realise this also applies to practically all music - the tween girls like Justin Beiber because he appeals to their subjective ideas of what music should sound like and the act look like. Justin Beiber therefore also contains merit simply on the fact that his audience wants to engage with his output. This hinges on the notion that the purpose of music is to communicate something, which seems like a reasonable argument. We know Beethoven did intend this as his purpose because of what he wrote about his music. All I'm saying is that the merit in Beethoven lies in the fact that an audience still wants to hear his music, and that as he used a certain compositional method I believe this constitutes the success of this method. It doesn't preclude that a different method might work too, but I advocate the freedom-on-top-of-a-firm-structure approach because in Beethoven and others I can see that it produces the definition of merit explained above. My argument is NOT the crude 'Lots of people like Beethoven, therefore Beethoven is definitely good' but rather 'Some people like Beethoven, and the fact that he produced something that made them think so is how we define the merit in his work.' I'm not measuring the degree of merit according to this definition, just trying to show that it is present. The reason why I've been banging on about citing academics is that I seriously thought you were disputing the idea that amongst the classical music audience Beethoven was not in fact a popular composer, something I thought would be so empirically self-evident as to not require any proof. Ok, so I was mistaken in this interpretation of your position and probably didn't make this clear; I've been arguing against something I needn't have. Of course I'm not trying to argue that an academic or group of them or popular opinion can dictate personal taste, I never suggested this. I did argue that an academic or a member of the audience would be a reliable judge of how such an audience regards a work. I am using the fact that a significant number of people are receptive to Beethoven's work simply to conclude that his music is succeeding in engaging with an audience. The only value judgement within this would be how one would define 'popular amongst the classical music audience', because this is what I thought you were disputing. That's why I questioned whether you were arguing that Beethoven's works were not of good quality because, as you explain at length, this would be a moot point, it's unprovable.

Provided that what this guy does was actually music. What I find really laughable is that a gang of musical nobodies are throwing mud at each other about John Williams's success - like he would ever care about their opinion. For better or worse his place in film music history is assured - we'd better work on earning our own.

Only people who have achieved at least the equivalent of what "ol' John" has are in any position to demand specific conditions for others to say their opinions on "ol' John."

That is so ridiculous I am actually laughing right now. Yeah you can't criticize a book until you become a published author or a movie until you become a famous movie director. No, the Star Wars prequels don't suck, become Lucas then you can give your personal opinion on them. Or you could be honest and say "Stop not liking things I like!"

Only thing I would add: only when someone has achieved at least the equivalent of what ol' John has, he'll be in a position to say "John sucks".

On what earth exactly? No, seriously? When was this? Give me any single epoch in the history of western music and I can show you the very same debates we are having right now. I mean, people still wrote cyphered bass sonatas well into Beethoven's late period! Likewise, the most popular composers at his time were Italian opera composers (Rossini was pretty much a rock star, eclipsing EVERYONE else.) Someone like Schubert was practically unheard of during his own lifetime, where other lied composers (now ignored) were much more popular than he ever was. It has always been, and always will be, a matter of opinion. No matter how scared some people are that they can't find some magical justification for their own tastes, it's still tastes.

Well it's nice and all hearing about your tastes, but since when is the forum your personal blog? I mean, sure, you can think whatever you want about the music you don't like but asking it like you're doing doesn't lend itself to discuss anything. In fact, it just lends to "Good for you!" and that's it, since to even begin to discuss anything we have to define what your terms there even mean to other people than yourself. With no linguistic common ground it's rather difficult to discuss anything at all. But what bothers me about this whole thread is the attitude of complaining and scalloping about "Oh there's music I don't like! Oh no!" Seriously, what is there for me to say? Too bad? If you don't like some music, you don't, but was it really necessary to make a thread where you complain to others about your personal opinion? I mean what do you expect people to reply, seriously? It's neither mine nor anyone's objective, I hope, to convert or "make you like" any kind of music, of course. The point here is only that the OP post could as well be a flame and I could as well lock the thread for this fact. You're not actually providing anything at all to discuss in what, in summary is simply a thread complaining about what you don't like. Speaking of which, I never said anything against Beethoven.

I trust people to be faster than you, though.

I would submit that the horn is easily the hardest to play well. For no other instrument is there such a large difference in quality between players widely considered to be the best soloists in the world (where the likes of Brain and Tuckwell made literally everyone else sound amateurish)...

And I also hear from some people that the French Horn is sadisticly hard Yes, if you've ever played French Horn, you would know how hard it is to hit the right notes. Even after you learn a piece very well, you can still mess it up.